The Next Billion Startups List 2018

Each year, Forbes and TrueBridge Capital Partners take a look at twenty-five of the fastest-growing tech companies, compiling their list of the Next Billion-Dollar Startups. These companies are determined by almost 200 venture capital firms who nominate companies they think are the most likely to achieve unicorn status. From there, Forbes and TrueBridge narrow down the list to twenty-five, taking into account the companies’ revenue, funding, and most recent valuation.

Here are just a few of the companies you may have heard of edging towards unicorn status:

Coursera

Founded by Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, Coursera is the original culmination of the idea of putting massive open courses online for anyone to take at their leisure. For free. Since then, the idea has been adjusted so that Coursera can bring in a profit. Today, users pay to complete courses and receive certifications; employers pay a premium in order to offer courses to their employees; and, they receive a portion of tuition revenue with schools that offer degrees through Coursera.

They’ve raised $210 million in equity thus far, and are estimated to rake in $140 million by the end of 2018.

Honey

Ryan Hudson and George Ruan came up with the idea that a free browser extension would help users find discount codes and cashback rewards from online vendors. It’s similar to the idea of coupons, and they’ve recently expanded their offerings to more vendors than ever. In the past year alone, Honey’s user base has doubled from five million to ten.

Currently, Honey has raised $55 million in equity, and is on track to make $100 million by year end.

Poshmark

While originally developed as a means to resell just women’s clothing, Poshmark has expanded into men’s, kid’s, plus sizes, luxury, and cosmetics items in six short years. To date, they’ve managed to raise $160 million in equity. With a 20% cut on each transaction and 40 million users, Manish Chandra, Tracy Sun, Gautam Golwala, and Chetan Pungaliya are estimated to make $130 million in revenue just this year.